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Remarks on the Direction of Time in Quantum Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Meir Hemmo
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Abstract

I argue that in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics time has no fundamental direction. I further discuss a way to recover thermodynamics in this interpretation using decoherence theory (Zurek and Paz 1994). Albert's proposal to recover thermodynamics from the collapse theory of Ghirardi et al. (1986) is also considered.

Type
Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 70 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2003 , pp. 1458 - 1471
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I thank David Albert, Frank Arntzenius, Guido Bacciagaluppi, Jeremy Butterfield, Itamar Pitowsky, Orly Shenker, and Professor Dieter Zeh for helpful comments on issues related to this paper.

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